


Life Lessons

by hirusen



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Confessions, Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship/Love, Gen, Group Is Concerned, Men Crying, Mild Language, My First Work in This Fandom, Nightmares, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Platonic Cuddling, Please Don't Kill Me, Self-Esteem Issues, Tags Are Hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-11-02 07:47:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20673239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hirusen/pseuds/hirusen
Summary: At first, they had thought that it was from the stress of everything they just went through; now? Now they were getting worried.





	Life Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> I...honestly don't know. The idea just came to me while I was playing Borderlands 3 (Which is SO fucking fun!).

Vaughn jerked awake, along with Fiona and Sasha, when Rhys screamed blood murder in his sleep again. "Rhys? Hey, buddy, wake up!" Vaughn barked as he shook his friend's shoulder and barely ducked in time to avoid the man's metal arm slamming into his skull. "V-Vaughn?" Rhys shakily asked, his flesh hand scrubbing over his face for a moment before he looked out and saw that the others were awake as well. "...I'm sorry..." He said weakly as he stood up and walked out of the caravan, gently closing the door behind himself.

He didn't mean to wake up his friends so easily, nor so often, but he couldn't help it. Despite the years that they've been away, the nightmares were back. He knows if he mentions them to Vaughn that his friend would freak and try to do everything he could to help, which was sweet, but didn't really help their situation right now. They needed to find one of Gortys's upgrades. He had only walked a few meters from the caravan, but that was clearly enough for Handsome Jack to jerk into reality again, a strangely worried look on his face.

"You alright, kiddo?" "Don't call me that." Rhys tiredly replied, stepping around a rock and plopping himself down onto the dirt, not really caring for whatever Jack had to say at the moment. Now, don't get him wrong, Rhys was fricking ECSTATIC to have Jack around, but with everything that's going on in his head right now, his presence reminds him a little _too_ much of people he's tried so hard to forget. Handsome Jack frowned deeper and crouched so he was eye level with his host; he's known Rhys--for the short time they've spent together--to be a little bit of an eccentric goof with the WORST luck, but this bothered the man too much to leave alone.

"...You wanna talk 'bout it?" "Heh, really? This is what it's come to? Handsome freaking Jack asking a pathetic excuse for a human if he's okay?" Whoa. That...isn't a good sign. "Rhys, come on, don't fight me here. I'm worried about you; your friends are worried about you. You need to talk to someone about what's going on." Named programmer just looked at his shoes, silent. "I will hijack your body to figure out what's wrong, pumpkin." "Do it and I'll throw myself off a fucking cliff." _Okay. NOW we're getting somewhere._

"Something in there you don't want me to know?" "Yes. Now back off." Rhys growled, throwing daggers at Jack from under his lashes and the man quickly raised his hands in surrender. "Alright, kiddo, you win. I'll leave it alone." He reassured, not liking how quickly Rhys's vitals spiked after he threatened to take over his head. After a few more awkward moments of silence, Rhys felt that he was calm enough to try and go back to sleep, and went back to the others. Rhys held back a little chuckle when, as he settled back down for the rest of the night, he felt Vaughn cuddle up against his back; he entwined their fingers and easily feel into an empty sleep.

* * *

Fiona managed to be the first one to be yanked awake by another one of Rhys's nightmares. She moved quickly, shaking the man's shoulder roughly enough to pulled him out of his dreams, the Hyperion worker gasping heavily for a moment, a hand coming up to grip his robotic arm. "You alright?" She whispered, reaching up to wipe away some tears that had fallen down Rhys's face, but the man had a death grip on her wrist the second she reached for his face. "S-Sorry..." He muttered as he let her go, moving for the door again when she stopped him.

"Here. It's a bit cold outside." She said as she placed her jacket over his shoulders, stepping away from him to go back to sleep. Rhys sighed heavily as he stepped outside, barely having closed the door before Jack was before him again, that same worried look on his face. "Don't." "I-I didn't--!" Handsome Jack fumbled as Rhys walked past him, tucking himself out of sight. _...Whatever he's dreaming about, it has something to do with his arm._ Jack knows he could just tap into Rhys's ECHOeye and research what happened to him, but he strangely felt that that was crossing a line that he really shouldn't be.

Instead, he simply walked over to Rhys and stayed by his side as he calmed down. "...Leave me alone, please. You're NOT helping anything." Rhys hissed through his teeth and while Jack felt the urge to stay just to piss the kid off, something about how Rhys was presenting himself in this moment--curled up small, arms over his head, not looking at Jack--told the Hyperion CEO everything he needed. Rhys couldn't describe how grateful he was when Jack walked away; the memories were just too strong right now for him to not react on reflex and try to hide.

_God...why were my...so..._ He brokenly thought as he felt more tears run down his face, but he didn't care. It took him longer than the other night to calm, which wasn't a good sign, but he ignored it. Stepping back into the caravan, Rhys carefully draped Fiona's jacket back over her body and quietly walked over to her sister. Lowering himself down, he laid so that he was face-to-face with her and closed his eyes, hoping to find some sleep; just before he drifted off, he felt her arms coil around his body and a little smile wash over his lips as the darkness took him.

* * *

Rhys whipped upright with a voiceless scream, sweat coating his brow as he panted. Handsome Jack was crouched over him, a narrow look on his face. "Come on, kitten, outside." He basically ordered and didn't seem surprised when the younger man seemed to be frozen in place. In a move that shocked Rhys, Jack actually _GRABBED_ his metal arm and yanked him to his feet, dragging the man to the door and taking over his arm for long enough to open the door and pull Rhys outside, making sure to close the door behind him.

"J-Jack? Hey! Where are you--" "Shut it." He growled and Rhys listened too obediently for Jack's tastes. Jack released his hold on Rhys and the man stumbled for a moment, the CEO taking that moment to turn and face his host. "Now, I want you to talk to me about the nightmares you're having." "W-Why?" "...It seems to me that you're reliving moments of past abuse that lead to you losing your arm; I know your file enough to know that you lost both your right arm and left eye in an accident." Jack stated and frowned when Rhys's vitals shot up.

"I-I don't know--" "Don't bullshit me. You fricking know what I'm talking about, cupcake; besides, your heartbeat and breathing are too fast for you to lie effectively." Rhys shot a wild look at Handsome Jack and felt the blood drain from his face at the realization that Jack could read his vitals. "...What happened?" "...A-Abuse..." "By who?" "B-Both, but mainly dad..." Jack hummed. "Which is why you don't like having me around when you have the nightmares. What are you remembering in these dreams?" "T-The...times dad would...b-bea..." He couldn't say it, but it seemed that Jack understood what he was trying to say.

"...How did it lead to your accident?" Jack softly asked and Rhys crumbled to the ground then, tears running down his face like rain. "Mom was fed up with dad, trying to protect me; he pushed mom into the street, tried to save her but a truck came fast down the street and..." And crashed into both Rhys and his mother, causing her to die and Rhys to lose his arm. "And the eye?" "Broken beer bottle to the face; didn't want my face to scar, so he took me to a doctor." _Seems to have worked pretty well._ Jack's sure that only he and Rhys can see the extremely faint diagonal line that washed over the man's left eye.

"B-But why does any of this matter to you?!" "Because I was abused before." Rhys froze. "My father died and my mother 'graciously' left me in the care of my grandmother. Gran-gran...beat me...whenever I seemed to misbehave or cop an attitude with her." Jack stepped closer, a more regretful look now washing over his face. "...And I've also abused a child as well." "W-What?" "My...daughter, A-Angel," Jack choked, swallowing around the lump in his throat before pushing on, "she was a Siren. I knew that you could use a Siren's power to charge Vault Keys faster and after I had recovered the one that had been used to open the Vault containing the Destroyer, I...I used the Eridium that was created after the Vault was opened on my daughter to fuel her powers and tried to charge the Vault Key. I...wasn't kind to her, while I did this."

Jack's never said that aloud to anyone before, and he's refusing to mention how he had been slamming against some form of mental glass when he started to do that to his daughter; he NEVER wanted to hurt his precious Angel, even after she accidentally killed her mother when her powers had awoken. The restraints he used on her and Lilith? He had started to develop those as a means to restrain Angel's powers so she could _train_ herself to control them so the restraints wouldn't be needed; they were never meant to _hurt_ her, but after he had that rune seared onto his skin thanks to Lilith, his mind seemed to have broke and it was like he didn't have control over himself half the time.

"I-I do-don't..." "What I'm trying to say is that I understand. I understand what's going on in your head when you're being abused, and I also understand the kind of trauma one can inflict onto the person they abuse." Jack flatly stated, slowly reaching a hand out, echoing the movements of trying to comfort him. "So please, don't run away from your friends when these nightmares happen. Tell them about this in the morning, okay? **I** didn't have anyone to run to, and I had ensured that Angel didn't have anyone but me to run to when I was abusing her; **you** have people you can run to, so run to them."

Rhys broke down even more, but he nodded his head, curling up small, arms wrapped around himself, but sensed as Jack wrapped him up in his arms. There was no physical touch that could happen between the two outside of Jack hacking Rhys's arm, but this felt...warm, and comforting, and everything Rhys has been missing from an adult figure in his life. Jack felt himself smile when Rhys mindlessly leaned into his phantom touch.

* * *

Rhys jerked awake, shaking again, but he took a steadying breath and made his way over to Vaughn. "Vaughn?" "Mngh? Rhys? ...Another one?" Name man nodded his head and offered a weak smile when his friend just lifted up an arm, welcoming Rhys under the blanket. As he cuddled up to his friend, Rhys noticed that Handsome Jack had appeared next to them. He lowered himself to the floor and reached out, stroking Rhys's head as he started to hum a now familiar lullaby to Rhys; it was one he said he had sung to Angel when she was still a baby whenever she was upset. And that's the last thing Rhys remembered: wrapped up in his best friend's warm embrace and the man Rhys as been in love with for years gently stroking his head while he sung to him.


End file.
